I have been with Sprint for 10 years. I have the best plan ever and have received amazing support. I have been with Palm for 15 years! I have every program on the planet! I can do anything with my Treo 755p. I have worked out the ability to do just about anything with this phone.

I started a new job about 3 years ago as the sales manager for a major financial institution. When I came on board, no one had smartphone, not even the IT department or CEO. I should them what I could do with my phone and with in 6 months they all got one. Well we got a new IT manager, he is a huge Windows fan and he convinced everyone to convert to the Treo 700wx. Now the company is standardizing and everyone is forced to get one.

I buy my own phone and pay for my own plan, but they are willing to pay for my plan and a new phone if I switch. They will let me get the best phone and free upgrades when I want them. I am so torn.

What would you guys do?

Remember I DO EVERYTHING ON THIS PHONE! Turn on the TV, Balance Checkbook, Watch TV, send emails, Stay Organized, YOU NAME IT!

No one has been able to show me it (WM) can do what mine can do (755p), The only reason they are upset is because Chatter is not working well with our exchange server. I could go to Versamail but it is a crap program. I am really torn.

Remember I DO EVERYTHING ON THIS PHONE! Turn on the TV, Balance Checkbook, Watch TV, send emails, Stay Organized, YOU NAME IT!

I went from a BB 8700 (GSM) to WM5 smartphone (CDMA) to the 755p (CDMA), over the course of 8 months or so. There is -no comparison-. Hopefully WM6 is infinitely better, otherwise you'll be very disappointed with a WM phone. I also am a phone "power user," I guess; I got hooked on my BB and now rarely use my laptop at home for more than the most serious work. I used my m130 until I got the BB, incidentally. =)

The problems I had with WM5 (that weren't specific to the "smartphone", which I do not recommend in any circumstance) over the four months I had it:
1) no decent push solution, except EAS (which has not been supported anywhere I've worked);
2) lousy lousy e-mail client, better than Versa but barely. Not Chatter nor BB.
3) Web browser (PIE) much worse than Blazer. No kidding. Not even JSJSJS$support$. $You$$could$$buy$$one$$of$$the$$Operas$$native$, $which$$was$$okay$, $but$$the$$Java$$Opera$$on$$the$$BB$$was$$well$$ahead$$of$$both$$POS$$and$$WM$, $and$$free$$since$$I$$was$$on$$Cingular$$at$$the$$time$.
4) Java? Heh. Of course I can pretty much say the same about Palm.
5) Free apps? No. Cheap apps? No. Apps that do what you want? Not really. I had trouble finding a usable check register program, much less anything graphical with a pretty GUI, data backup, and recurring payments like MyCheckbook - which is, of course, free. Shortly after my WM phone died I learned someone had hacked some HTC apps to display YouTube, and apparently StyleTap + Kinoma works, but -every single thing- I tried to do was like that: two hours of hunting on the internet, downloading several things through my computer, then syncing them to the phone, then trying them, then they not working or complaining, then... And everything (even things like a simple Today screen!) was shareware, or hacked out of some other phone. At least if you buy Palm apps you usually have access to the developer and can install OTA, the WM stuff seemed all over the map. It reminded me of the early days of Windows 95 when everyone got Visual Basic and realized they could put together a pretty app that didn't do anything very completely, then ask $20 for it.
6) Registry corruption. Hey, it works so well in the PC world let's take it mobile! You can reset out of this but...
7) Multi-tasking, application problems => bricked phone. So bricked that they sent it back to Sprint. Who sent me a 755p in return for my not throwing clay bricks through their front windows.

My BB had the better browser and application support (Java will do that) but the data plan (cost+speed) killed me versus Sprint WM / POS. Not to mention, I missed the Palm touchscreen, and the CDMA data rate is -so much better- than Cingular/AT&T that I'm totally spoiled and couldn't think of going back. Maybe 3g is better, but then I'm in the USA so it's not like I have access to such an infrastructure...

Thanks for the great post. This gives me amo. I hate to be so petty over something like a cellphone, but I am very productive, never complain, and hell I buy my own phone! Now they want me to switch. I totally understand why, if I were in IT I would probably do the same thing. But it has to be a win/win for this to work.

Ok, so...new job. Job being the key word here. Your treo is personal, not work related. If they're standardizing and forcing people to get the windows based one, it should come out of their pockets and they would be the ones paying for EVERYTHING for it, plan and all.

This is all great conversation, I did some investigating. The biggest issue is email. Since I use my treo to connect to the exchange server via imap because chatter requires they open a couple ports (which they don't want to do). So today I switched to Versamail and I going to try it. I also told them I have have 3 batteries, tons of software, GPS and a killer plan that they would have to replace. So I am waiting to see what happens next. I really don't want to go to windows.

I use VersaMail with my company Exchange server, and it works fine - instant push email of course, OTA sync of calendar and contacts. My only problem with VM is that it doens't have subfolder support when being used with EAS (I have a WX as well, which does, so I have a comparison point).

As long as you know what VM will give you, going into it, you should be fine. I'm not saying VM is the world's best email client (it's not), but if your IT folks want you to use EAS, then VM is probably your best choice. (for a Palm OS device, for which your IT guys won't have to re-engineer anything).

Good luck (oh and make sure you have the latest version of VM as well).

This is all great conversation, I did some investigating. The biggest issue is email. Since I use my treo to connect to the exchange server via imap because chatter requires they open a couple ports (which they don't want to do). So today I switched to Versamail and I going to try it. I also told them I have have 3 batteries, tons of software, GPS and a killer plan that they would have to replace. So I am waiting to see what happens next. I really don't want to go to windows.

With Chatter with the EX plugin you don't need IT to open any ports. If you can get to OWA, then more than likely you can use the EX plugin.

Interesting that your IT department is forcing a wx device. My company will now allow any windows mobile device on the network at all as they said there isn't enough security with one. They "corporately" approve Blackberry, but they have allowed me to keep my Palm device for hotsyncing my calendar, contacts, tasks and memos. I managed to figure out how to sync via the exchange server, but they were not willing to support me doing that. So while I do have e-mail syncing, they wouldn't help me set it up.

Any chance they would let you stick with your Palm device (and you pay for it), but they pay for your plan? Versamail works fine for just "keeping up" with e-mail, though as another poster mentioned there is no folder support. They shouldn't have to change anything for you to get the sync working so you will be as reachable as they are, just using Palm instead of wm.